Here is a luxury.
Some of these food ingredients differ astronomical price – do you know the most expensive delicacies.
Saffron
If your figure Shine like gold, then most likely, it was made with saffron.
Spice, nicknamed the “red gold”, is a bright orange pterostigma or stigma, of the flower of the Crocus, used as a food dye. And it is not just “weight in gold” she is more precious than gold, if you compare the cost per gram. But why is saffron so expensive?
The reasons are simple. Saffron crocuses bloom only for a week or two a year, in autumn; collection of spices time-consuming, because they can be collected and processed only manually.
Each small flower only three stigmas, that is, for one kilogram of saffron requires about two football pitches of crocuses. Is 300000 colors.
Caviar
Sturgeon ROE is considered one of the greatest delicacies in the world. It is difficult to handle and pack, but more importantly, it is very small in nature. The most famous caviar is Beluga caviar, sturgeon fish inhabiting Caspian sea and the Black sea.
Because Beluga is endangered, it is legally possible to sell a very small amount of her calf.
To produce caviar, the Beluga takes up to two decades, but to extract the ROE, the fish must be killed.
Even rarer sturgeon caviar-albino, this species is almost completely extinct in the wild.
According to “the Guinness Book of records”, the most expensive was the eggs of older species of Beluga-the albino at the age of about 100 years. Her white ROE was sold for 34 and a half thousand dollars per kilogram.
Oysters
Oysters, which are now considered a luxury, has not always been the delicacy of secured class.
In the early nineteenth century, oysters were cheap, like potatoes, eat them simple laborers and the villagers. There were so many that oysters stuffed pies. But overexploitation and environmental pollution dramatically affected stocks of oysters, and the deficit has increased the cost.
Their prices in different restaurants around the world vary, but a dozen of these shellfish in one of London’s finest seafood restaurants will cost you about $ 65. At the famous borough market to buy oysters for £ 10 ($13) for 8 pieces, but serve them on a paper plate and in the crush. On the coast is even cheaper, but still available to all product, not exactly.
Truffle
So appreciate the white truffle is one of the rare underground mushrooms in the world, find it very difficult. It grows only in the Piedmont region in Northern Italy among the roots of some trees. White truffle is much rarer than any other.
The white variety has a very intense taste and aroma, making it even more attractive. They are impossible to cultivate or to artificial conditions: for centuries, people have tried to cultivate truffles, but they still can get only in the wild.
It is this unpredictability, along with the complexity of the collection, are the reason it is so expensive.
A record amount for a single white truffle was paid the casino owner in Macau Stanley Ho in 2007. He gave 330 thousand dollars for one of the biggest truffles found in the last decade – with a weight of 1.5 kg. Unbelievable price for the underground fungus.
Iberian ham
There ham is the Iberian ham.
This type of jerky is made in a certain area in the territory of Spain and Portugal, where the oak forests are the black Iberian pig (pork or mixed breed, at least half of the Iberian). This area is called Dehesa. Here pigs roam freely and enjoy the acorns and only acorns before slaughter.
The classification of Iberian ham is very very strict: ham with “black label” is considered the best and is made from purebred Iberian pigs.
In addition, this expensive ham is dried for 36 months, and sometimes up to 48 months under the special conditions of drying.
According to “the Guinness Book of records”, the most expensive ham (pork leg) that you can buy is the Iberian variety “Manchado de Jabugo”, which sold for $ 4 080.
But the price is not so shocking when you consider that pigs were reared only three years old, and their feet were dried for about four years.
Wagyu Beef
Wagyu simply means “Japanese beef”, but it is only one of the four types of Japanese cows. Tight meat mixed with fat that melts during cooking, making the steak tender and juicy. The meat almost melts in your mouth.
Some fans say that it looks like a soft fish falling apart while eating.
The high price associated with the growing process: to qualify for the grade Wagyu, cows need to grow and feed in accordance with the strict rules, while the calves are given special feed to ensure the formation of fatty streaks – the “marble”.
Such beef can cost up to $ 640 per kilogram in Japan.
Coffee Luwak
Technically, it’s a drink, not food, but as coffee Luwak is worth up to seven hundred dollars per kilogram, then, of course, has a right to a place in this list.
Coffee Luwak or teletovic coffee is made from coffee beans that have been eaten, partially digested and then thrown out with the faeces of the Asian palm civet (civet).
Doesn’t sound very appetizing. But it is believed that the aroma of coffee enhanced by the acids of the stomach of the animal, as the digestion and fermentation is added to the coffee beans a special taste and flair.
It is possible that this is just a trick, and the espresso is just terrible, but to understand, you need to try.
There is this story and really sad aspect is for the poor Civetta: more and more animals are grown in specterman where they live in cages as laying hens, and where they are force-fed coffee beans.
Foie Gras
Foie gras is very expensive pate made from duck or goose liver. Birds for this purpose are fatten to an amazing size – up to ten times more than usual.
As a result, the paste turns aromatic, fatty and tender.
Lovers of fine cuisine are willing to pay for the delicacy is high price. But really the high price paid by the birds to obtain the fatty liver of these geese and ducks are fed corn through a feeding tube.
This practice for four and a half thousand years. Then the ancient Egyptians discovered that the meat of many birds becomes much more aromatic after artificial overfeeding.
In our days many countries have laws prohibiting the practice, manufacture, import or sale of foie Gras, but the product remains popular.
